Volcano hike to Fuego!

Well, there'll be 2 blog updates in rapid succession.  Tonight is about our weekend hike to a volcano named Fuego.  Tomorrow will be about the completion of the washing machine aka the "Bicilavadora".  Then Javier and I are gonna start on a mobile.... great things to see!

Friday right after the end of the day we left for a Volcano named Fuego.  First, we caughta chicken bus to a crossroads not too far from here.  At that point, all 6 of us managed to land a ride in the back of a pickup to a small town at the base of a mountain next to the volcano.... at that point, we had to catch another chicken bus, bus it was full.... so we had the luck of riding ON TOP of the bus for about 1/2 hour.  We went into the clouds.  CLOUDS!

The volcano we went to is called "Fuego". "Fuego" is famous for being almost constantly active at a low level. Smoke issues from its top daily, but larger eruptions are rare.  The volcano itself is about 3,700m high.  We hiked to a small bump connected to the main volcano, probably around 3600m.  Took us about 6 hours to hike up to there, arriving at 12:30am.  We sat there and watched low level eruptions for a few hours, and I passed out in the comfort of a sleeping bag under the stars.  It was a great place to contemplate things that have happened (as if they really matter), and where to be a bigger person in the world.  By the way, there's pine trees here.  I have a pinecone.  

Eruption at 1-2am

OOOOOH

Back of pickup with some... chunky locals.

More ooooooh

Hiking home at 7am or so.

Enjoy the photos!  

No volcaNO!

Well well I thought I’d drop a little update…

The weekend: we skipped the volcano due to some thunderstorm activity in the area.  Instead, Javier and I left for Antigua on Saturday morning.  Antigua is an old, very European Spanish city.  It was once the capital of Guatemala, and is now the most “European” you will find in all of Guatemala.  There is little here of the Mayan culture which defines much of the country.  Instead, there are fantastic ruins of the catholic/Christian faith.  The city itself sits amongst distant volcanoes which were cloaked in clouds when we visited.

We pretty much spent the day wandering, eating, and enjoying quality coffees.  Interestingly, there was an outdoor photography exhibit discussing the state of water problems throughout the world.  These ranged from water pollution in India, to damn constructions in China causing massive population relocations with little to no compensations, to the privatization of the Bolivian water system in the late 90’s by Suez (which made it illegal to even collect rainwater), the Rio Negro incidents in Guatemala leaving hundreds murdered and executed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Negro_Massacre), and many, many more.  It is refreshing and hope-inducing to see that the knowledge of the coming world water crisis and the power that people have to prevent water from becoming a business commodity.  I encourage whoever is reading this blog to look into these and other water issues throughout the world.  And, if you can spare the $3.99 and an hour of your time, watch the documentary Flow: For the love of water  which show us examples of the problems with water becoming a business commodity.  Yes, this even affects you Canadians in North America, since water is our largest natural resource.

Anyhow, other than that we stayed at a hostel named the Black Cat.  For anyone that travels here, I highly recommend NOT staying there unless you wanna wake up in the middle of the night being bit by little bed bug friends….  It was, for lack of a better term, fucking terrible.  But the next day, we wandered around the artisans market in Antigua, which is pretty huge, and hit up the local regular market where they sell everything from chocolcate covered pineapple pieces on a stick to rip off Raybans and t-shirts.  Indeed, a tavellers paradise if bargains are what you’re looking for. 

Signing off! Until soon!

Bike powered blender in Antigua

Bolivian military during water privatization

Guatemalan massacre in Rio Negro

Antigua

Antigua

Antigua

Antigua

Ummm. may 12th?

Mayan girl from further up in the mountains

The current volunteer crew

Ok so here’s the end of Thursday the 12^th of may.  Being posted on Friday the 13th.  Internet was down, and I wrote this on my laptop...

I need to think about what has happened in the last couple of days… Work in the shop has been fun and productive, but it really is a constant struggle knowing what is available out there in there world with money, and seeing what we are doing here with the minimal amounts of supplies and materials.  For example, I went out and purchased a set of metal drill bits and a pund of welding electrode so that we could continue on the new washing machine design.

Jean grinding

Oh yeah!  I’m designing and building a bicycle powered washing machine!  This is pretty cool.  Apparently, they’ve tried this before but had problems with durability and leaks.  They’re newest idea was to build a vertical machine, which I started on temporarily, but really, this involves many problems.  For example, with a bicycle drive, the vertical machine would spin in one direction, essentially pushing all the clothes and water to the outer area.  In a horizontal version, paddles mount to the inside would constantly move clothes around as the machine spins… and the drive system is much, much easier.

A butchered together drive mechanism to change drive plane... this is what we have to work with.

Working water pump!

So, that’s my and Paul’s mission for tomorrow and early next week… finish the washing machine.  Oh, and I’m gonna write an instruction manual on using a drill press and how to change speeds and what they should be for what material and tool bit… Next on the list is a bicycle powered generator to charge 12V batteries.  It really is amazing how little the people have in these rural Guatemalan locations.  It makes you wonder about other parts of the world, and how lucky I really am to have what I have in life.  But these people are happy with what they have, and are always so ever grateful every time we help their kids fix a soccer ball or bicycle tire or replace a broken brake handle.  Oh, and today Carlos and Javier went out to a location where a family was a bike powered water pump and repaired it (just needed some rope for the pump mechanism, after 1 year of constant use to supply a small community).  Really amazing.

So up the road is a cemetery, and every day around noon since I have been here, a procession of people will go up to the cemetery, almost in a jovial mood.  Yes, someone has died (today it was a baby, I saw the smallest coffin ever) but the people rejoice in the life that they are able to continue having.  They have a much closer connection to life and death here, as opposed to how we mask things like death by covering the dead in make up and their best clothes… anyhow, I’m ranting!

View from our roof

Mothers day here was curious, it’s not really mothers day but more womans day.  Carlos, the guy that runs Maya Pedal, took all us boys aside and said we should all pitch in and get a cake for Sarah, a girl that volunteers here.  So we did, and broke it out at one of our massive community dinners.  She was stoked, cause it was cheesecake!  YES!  Well, it kinda tasted like cheesecake, but really… don’t ask, just enjoy the cake!

Oh, and have I mentioned that a lady comes by every morning at 6am to bring us fresh milk?  Yes!  From her cow, up the hill a bit.  Non-pasteurized, amazing, tasty… and no, non of us have gotten sick.  It really complements the fresh made coffee we make every morning. 

mmmm cheesecake

So tomorrow is Friday, and our plan after work is to hike up a volcano near us and camp at the peak. Apparently, you can sleep there and watch the smoldering lava explode all night… I’m stoked to go!

A couple random photos from Belize

Our welcome sign in Belize

Random boat in Puerto Barrios

The state of non-tourist beaches in Belize.

STARFISH!!!!!!

Maya Pedal - days 1 and 2

HEY!!!

Alright everyone, so I made it to the town of San Adres Itzapa.  This is where I am volunteering with Maya Pedal. I arrived mid day on Sunday after an interesting ride on a chicken bus from Antigua city.  Luckily for me, I met this little old lady who knew where I wanted to go, and she pretty much walked me there.  Unfortunately, no one was around so I pretty much had a siesta in on the side of the road hoping that someone would show up.  The neighbor told me everyone was gone until the next day, but luckily she was wrong.  I was greeted by 2 guys from Spain who are biking from Alaska down to somewhere in South America.  They showed me around the shop whjich is really a crazy place.  I mean, you gotta picture it. I’m in a mountain town in Guatemala where people still use donkeys to move firewood around, and here’s this VERY basic (by our standards) machine shop that rebuilds bicycles and makes these bicycle powered machines…. 

So we chilled, they made dinner, and I met the rest of the people that are volunteering right now.  Bed time was late… I think 9pm is the standard in this part of the world…. That and I seem to be waking up around 4:30-5:00am for the last couple of days.

Alright, so today, the volunteer work started.  I threw some ideas at them, and they’ve got some great ones too, but tools and organization seems to be sometimes lacking.  There’s great motivation, but direction is something I’m going to get clearer in the time that I am here.

  Let’s see… today I fixed a barbeque lighter, an angle grinder, then proceeded to work on a machine that removes corn from the husk.  It’s good to be cutting metal and figuring things out with hands again!  2 others were working on a bicycle powered washing machine, which seems to be a new prototype as their last one didn’t function.  Another couple were organizing and labeling a parts room (key!  Too many bins with no names on them)

Throughout the day, random kids and locals dropped by to get their soccer balls patched, bicycles fixed, some parts welded together…  It’s amazing but this shop seems to create an affordable ability for people that otherwise would not have access to these repairs.  It seems to be a great intermediate step between 3^rd world situations and our developed world excesses.  The number of times I looked up through the bay doors onto the street to see toothless ladies dressed in brightly colored huipas smiling at me and people walking to fruit plantations with their machetes and carts… damn.  What a world.I am going to propose to Carlos, the guy that runs the place, to make his designs available open source to other locations in the world to give others the inspiration and freedom to make these kinds of positive changes in their own communities.

Anyhow, we finished day with an awesome dinner that Gavin and I cooked for 2 hours…. Beans, mashed potatoes with various fresh herbs (do you pronounce the h?) and a fresh veggie stir fry, topped of with a fresh fruit salad… enough to feed 7 of us, all acquired this morning at 7am at the market for just under 5 dollars.  It’s ridiculous the amount of food you get for what we in North America would call a small amount of money, yet some of the local people can be found living in atrocious poverty.  How can we help?  How can you help?

Alright, it seems that its sleep time for me, actually, I’m gonna study me some more Spanish.  Since I left my good friend and translator April, and the majority of the people in the shop speak Spanish, I have gotten over my fear of talking and am just getting whatever words I can out there into semi-cohesive sentences…

 And the internet seems to work for 4-5 hours a day so I’ll be posting updates regularly  J

PEACE!  

First week - Belize, beaches, and boats!

Hey kids! Ok, well the first week was pretty much a blast. Upon arriving in Guatemala city on the night of the 29th, I met up with my travel friend April. We crashed out pretty hard after some excited minutes of realizing we´re not in the cold but in a tropical, central american country. The next morning we caught a 6 hour bus ride to what I think is the end of the world: A guatemalan city named Puerto Barrios. This used to be the main ocean shipping town of the country, and it had some shadey characters and the worlds crappiest room to rent for the night.  Nevertheless, we ventured out and found a neat little place to eat right on the water and had a couple drinks to celebrate the day.  Afterwards, we wandered around and found a late night soccer game going on, and 3 local kids cam over and chatted us up for over an hour. They don´t see many gringos there, so they were pretty stoked. Interestingly, they don´t have to attend school after grade 6, and who knows what they do with that minimal education.  But eventhough they are extremely poor, they were happy and playing, and very social.

The next morning, we grabbed a 1.5 hour boat ride accross the Carribean to Punta Gorda (fat point) in Belize, and immediately grabbed a bus going north to the town of Independance. The bus ride was uneventful enough, but beautiful on the way.  Again, we saw lots of poverty and ramshackled huts on the way. The local indiginous, whom are descendants of the mayans, seem to be the poorest of the country, and still speak regional dialects that have nothing to do with spanish.

In Independance, we caught a small 15 minute boat ride to the Placencia Peninsula... which was almost exactly what you´d expect in a carribean town.  Beaches, hammocks, creole english, and our favorite - cabins rite down by da beach.  So we had to rent one.  It´s ridiculously sheap to sleep in a cabin with your own private hammock for the days.  And the gentle ocean breeze kept the mozzies and heat away at night.  Perfect.  Days of sleeping, eating, swimming, eating, swimming, eating, snorkeling, sleeping, swimming.. (well, you get the idea) followed.

Then on Thursday the... 5th we left Placencia and headed back towards Punta Gorda.  On the way, we hit up some Mayan ruins named Nim Lii Punit.  They were pretty interesting, and we´ve got some photos to upload when I find a computer with better capabilities. HA! 

Anyhow, we checked that great stuff out, and then on Friday we returned to Guatemala city.  Today, we´re gonna go cehck out some of the markets and see the locals peddle their wares.  Then tonight, April´s gonna go meet up with her study group whom she´ll be spending the next 2 months with studying povery and social activities in Guatemala.  Tomorrow, I head to the town of San Andres itzapa, outside of Antigua, to where I´ll be doing volunteer work for the next 5 weeks at this place - mayapedal.org.

Updates to follow... Thanks April for being a patient travel companion!

The night before... and the plan!

Alright homies.

It's the night before I leave...  Tomorrow at 6am I venture to Guatemala to meet up with a friend, and we'll travel up to Belize for a week.  After that, I'll return to Guatemala to go do some volunteer work with a great organization - www.mayapedal.org.  Check them out!  They've got a great cause that really makes a difference in measurable ways.

o I've spent the majority of the last few days running around incessantly  getting all the projects wrapped up, and I still have to find my toothbrush.  I think I packed it already.  Monty, the cat, has no idea that I'm out of the country for 6 weeks, but I think he'll be alright...eventually.   Other than that, goodbye Vancouver and your non-existant summer!